


the parentheses all clicking shut

by policeboxinvauxhallarches



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 19:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/policeboxinvauxhallarches/pseuds/policeboxinvauxhallarches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock, John, and the inevitability of time.</p>
<p>Or, alternatively: in Sherlock's head, what should be and what is are two different things. So he decides to change it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the parentheses all clicking shut

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, AO3. I have no idea what I'm doing.
> 
> So, um, just take this. I guess. Yeah.

> _Here we are  
>  in the wrong tunnel, burn O burn, but it's cold, I have clothes  
>  all over my body, and it's raining, it wasn't supposed to. And there's snow  
>  on the TV, a landscape full of snow, falling from the fire-colored sky._
> 
> _\- "Straw House, Straw Dog" by Richard Siken_

His only thought is that he has to make this right. All of it. The phone call solidifies that, shoves it into his head and makes the thought sit and burn its way through his skull. Sherlock stands at the top of the building and breathes. Inhales and exhales and waits. He has been here for a while, Jim Moriarty's corpse sitting behind him. The bang of the bullet still reverberates gently in his head, bouncing and settling and living. It's a magic trick. Yes. He will turn this into a magic trick, into a thing of the past. No, not even of the past - a thing of a different time. Just like always he can feel time whispering around him, winding, a gentle wind (familiar whispers of _no don't please_ ). 

He hasn't traveled in years. There's been no need. When he was young, he used to do it for a kick, as John would call it, something interesting, something that wasn't boring. He went all over, learned what he was interested in and deleted everything else from his travels. Small talk, the people, those were useless. But the events and the data were, of course, interesting. Traveling through time is like a muscle, a muscle that is now rather atrophied. His aim will likely be off and it might take him longer to fully travel. Perhaps it will hurt - he remembers his very first narrow-minded attempt at travel feeling like being torn from limb to limb.

Some of the worst pain he has ever experienced. He is not looking forward to it again, but it almost feels worse, watching John break apart at the seams here. It does feel worse. Because he cares about John, and watching him being torn apart by Sherlock is more torturous then he could have ever expected or imagined. There, on the ledge, Sherlock can feel himself being sawn apart. The only option left to him is to stop this, and he cannot stop it here and now. But he can try.

For once Sherlock cannot risk this. Cannot risk being off. Before, when he was younger, he didn't have to be exact. Now he has to be exact. For himself. For John. For both of them.

He steadies himself there, looking out over London. Maybe, when things are alright, he could try and explain this to John. He could try and explain the feeling of looking down and feeling _London_ breathing beneath his feet, like some great beast turning over in its deep slumber. He looks down at the tiny form of John Watson staring up at him as he tosses the cell phone off to the side. There's no need to bring it with him once he travels. The wind is cold enough to make him stiffen but he forces all of his muscles to react and stares down at John. Tears are running down his face and stinging from the cold (and he hasn't cried in years so it feels like something strange and foreign and wrong) and he can hardly breathe.

Better now than never. A saying John prefers but one that Sherlock cannot help but apply.

So he throws himself forward with a gust of wind propelling him. He does not watch the ground. He keeps his head tilted enough to watch John Watson, army doctor, flatmate, friend. John's mouth opens, a silent yell, or perhaps it isn't silent and the rush of wind overpowers his voice. Sherlock is too far away from John to read his lips, but he can think of all the things that he would like John to say. All of the things that should've been said. It doesn't matter, because he focuses on John's face - kind, wonderful John Watson, a man who stayed through crimes and fingers in the fridge and the possibility of death because he cared - and knows that this is worth it. 

_John, I -._

Reality pulls apart and things move like they shouldn't. Buildings tip. The entire world seems to rotate, brick and sky and poles all mashing together into a conglomerate of colors. There is no texture, no real way to put things together. Chaos in the bluntest terms possible, complete and utter. He focuses on a time, the most recent time he can remember being truly happy, streets and the pounding of feet and the cold link of metal between his hand and the hand of an army doctor. A moment later Sherlock Holmes opens his mouth to let out a yell of pain because agony explodes behind his eyelids, and everything is pulling and twisting and wrong and then -.

"Sherlock?"


End file.
